There's an article on (BBC) News Online about worry that there are a few children who may have been taken into care erroneously. The kids have "Asperger's Syndrome" and the concern is that that can lead to behavioural problems which look like abuse symptoms. The thing that I found a bit of a sweeping statement was the words of the social services panel chairman to one of the boys involved; "it concerns me you are not into sport and fashion like normal children of your age". Regardless of the presence of any syndrome or not, I thought that was pretty crass.
Now, I know there are quite a few people reading this who would agree that there is a section of the population who were definitely not abused and do/did not (knowingly) have Asperger's who can cheerfully say that they weren't into sport and/or fashion at school age. I know I wasn't. I was a swimmer for a while, but my parents took me out of the swimming club when I was about 12 because the club wanted me to start circuit training, including weights. So after that, I wasn't into sport really which was a bit of a shame because I was pretty good at swimming. I trundled along to a martial arts class for a few years but only because my two friends went. I hated it really because I was rubbish at it and stopped going. Watching sport? I couldn't have cared less about football, tennis[0], cricket etc. I didn't even watch the Olympics when it was on the television. And as for fashion? Hah! I still don't know which way up an eyeliner pencil goes and am only just beginning to be confident about getting clothes that don't make me look like a sack of spuds and may not be "this season's look", but are at least heading down the "timeless classics" avenue.
Was I a normal kid? Damn straight I was. A large percentage of other kids (and probably parents) at the time may not have thought so because I was into science fiction, fantasy, classical music and computers but, er, aren't we encouraged to be Individual and not just blindly follow the crowd? "Normal" really does cover almost everybody. I guess it is whether you draw the line at statistical variations or people who have mental/physical disabilities and even then there are degrees of severity such that you really ought to mostly discount that too. A kid with one finger missing on one hand? Normal! A kid who needs to boost their hearing with hearing aids? Normal! A kid with dyslexia? Normal! Normal because there are loads out there with their own problems and differences, it's just that not all of them have been given a medical term. Find me someone with absolutely no difficulties; physically, emotionally or mentally and I'll say they are a rare person indeed and the numbers will be on my side. In fact, the people with no difficulties at all are pretty much the abnormal ones. Society is too quick to judge and apply labels; but I digress.
Anyway, my point is that children who are not outgoing and socially advanced are going to get demoralised by people saying things like that. "What the hell is normal and who the hell is sane"[1] anyway?
[0] - there was this one time at junior school when I went home sick for a day during Wimbledon week and was accused by a teacher of wanting to go home to watch the tennis. Hah! I didn't even know Wimbledon was on that week 'cause I didn't give a toss about sport.
[1] - thanks to the Divine Comedy for that line.
My PC, she lives! In the shiny new Antec P160 which, incidentally, is amazingly quiet but the reset button isn't recessed. Oh and the new CPU fan has blue LEDs on it as well as the case having 3 at the front. *cough*
Now, this is interesting, seeing as the motherboard and CPU are the same models as the ones' from Komplett. In fact, all of the other components are unchanged. So why does it now work fine? Hmmm? I can't see there being any mileage in Komplett having lied about testing my mobo and CPU and just sending me back untested/broken ones at cost to them. So I don't understand what's going on here. But anyway. It works! It cost me £143 to make it so, but I'm almost beyond caring after 2 months of no gaming.
So, why does the UK do _so much better_ in the Paralympics than the Summer Olympics? Second in the mdeals table so far, with 31 medals, the summer team could only dream of doing that well. But why? Is it because the UK takes disabled athletes more seriously than most of the rest of the world? Something to ponder.
So I ordered some stuff from Sainsburys (yes, I know I said I'd had enough of them, but they gave me a load of vouchers) and in that order was "750g organic new potatoes" which was unavailable, so was substituted. They must be employing total morons, not just morons, or people with a certain sense of hatred for the rest of humanity. The substitution was "500g organic sweet potatoes". What am I supposed to do with that, then? Hmm? Needless to say, I sent them back.
I think the people who are hitting my journal with journal spam are either really really stupid, or English isn't a language of which they have a particular grasp.
I get around 8-10 bits of various journal comment spam per day, but the thing is that I Have Comment Approval Turned On. The comments system even tells you this when you submit a comment. So, dimwits (yes you Mr(s). Journal Spammer), the comments won't get seen by anyone Unless I Give Them Approval. Which I won't. Unless they are particularly funny. And none of them have been. So, Mr(s). Journal Spammer, give up because it just isn't going to get you anywhere. Like, duh!
So my copy of the Star Wars Trilogy (IV-VI) on DVD arrived today and on the bottom of the box is a BBFC certificate "PG", but with the qualifier "Contains mild violence and peril." Contains what? Yes, yes, I understand "mild violence", but "peril"? Er.
Oh, and my replacement mobo and CPU have shipped. Identical spec to the ones that Komplett say are OK, but which don't work in my current PC. If these work... well, I guess I have to shout very very loudly at Komplett and point out that Novatech can supply me an Athlon 3000+ Barton and Asus A7V8X-X that don't do what the ones they sold me do, so they really ought to take theirs back and refund me what I paid them. Of course the practicality of this may be a wee bit tricky.
So TiVo coped nicely with the stuff I told him about. Shame about the Sky update to my smelly old Amstrad box on the Saturday night in the middle of the fortnight. But still. Carnivale, on FX 289 a gem of a channel hidden in the Sky EPG that carries King of The Hill re-runs, is rather cool. Reminiscent of both Twin Peaks and American Gothic, and the dwarf from which has a major part. Very cool indeed. And, as others have mentioned, Green Wing is a bit of a laugh. Very short snippets of action, punctuated by bass-heavy music, funny and great for short-attention spans.
Carnivale and Green Wing. That's... Carnivale... and Green Wing.
Overall a rather good holiday. The gîte was, er, basic and a bit broken in places and a bit in the middle of nowhere, but there was good food and good wine and good cider. Yum.
Lots of sleeping, eating and drinking and pretty much bugger all else. The weather was great for most of the first week and the end of the second week.
The moggies are being a little weird now that they're back from the cattery. Very very vocal, especially when they can't see me - when I was taking a rather needed bath, they were both sat outside the bathroom door, yowling until I opened it a bit for them to see in. Hey ho.
Don' wanna go to school tomorrow.
Having been on call for the Personality Test thing on BBC ONE last night, I was idly perusing the web site and had a go at the online test. Apparently I'm a Resolver. Well, there's a surprise.
So, here is a quote from someone (taken from BBCPersian.com) who thinks that the banning of headscarves (and, lest we forget, _all_ religious symbols) in schools in France is a bad thing; "The point of the hijab is to limit displays of sexual desire in society and leave all such needs in the privacy of bedroom and in effect to promote marriage." Excuse me? So women have to cover every part of themselves apart from their face and hands, and sometimes not even those, but men don't. Because women are evil temptresses and men cannot control their urges if they see any part of a woman's body. Huh? This reminds me that, of course, women are not allowed to have sexual desires or satisfaction at all, or jobs or be able to drive cars, or be alone in the presence of any men who are not her family, or have any freedom at all. How is it that all of this applies to only women? How can it all apply only to women and then people stamp their feet and say that women are treated as equal under Islam. They aren't. Wake up and check what century we're in!
While I agree that women wearing next to nothing in the street isn't the most appropriate thing, neither do I think men should be shirtless in the street. For a start it isn't even that hot in this country, plus you actually end up hotter without one on and run the risk of sunburn to boot. But forcing women, through rules and emotional blackmail, to cover themselves from head to toe is not religious obedience (I use the word because good Muslims "surrender" themselves to god) but making sure that women are kept under control and never find out that they are capable of all sorts of things. Look at Turkey and Oman, where the main religion is Islam, and look at the women there. They are allowed, nay encouraged, to go to school, to university, to have good jobs as well as be wives and mothers, and they generally don't get veiled up to the eyes. In countries where the Hijab is "normal", the women who do get an education are rarely then allowed to have a job and a career, but get married off to have babies.
Having said all of that, I don't think that religious symbols should be banned in schools, ones which are prescribed by the religion at least. Sikhs and Jews should be allowed their turban and yarmulke, however the crucifix is not something that a Christian has to wear to be a "good" christian. As for the Hijab... the jury's out on whether it is compulsory to being a "good" Muslim woman. I am not in a position to comment on the religious texts, but I really think it needs reviewing and in my opinion (which counts for nothing as I am both a woman and not a Muslim) let go by those who currently say it is compulsory.
It boots to safe mode. No more. If I try to run Windows installer, it gets as far as "checking your hardware", then "starting windows", at which point it powers off. I've replaced every single item of hardware (except the CPU and motherboard) and the only times the PC works and doesn't power off quite quickly is if it is running Debian, or in Windows safe mode. What's the point of that? It's unusable. And I don't know why. I _do_ suspect it is some Windows driver that is broken/corrupt/just totally crap somehow. But I can't get around it without re-installing from scratch onto a clean disk. And I can't do that without the bloody media. Unless... oh it depends what format the drive with the copy of my XP CD is in.
And, yay, it is FAT32. So, I can install Windows 98 on the second disk and try to upgrade from the... oh no I can't. The copy of XP I have is for new machines only and won't let me upgrade. *wail*
Licence key found for XP, but no media. A whole bunch of CDs missing. *sigh* PC still happily running under Debian.
Overclockers - for making me sort out my own return courier, then keeping my case for 2 weeks, then not even testing it and shipping a new one once I'd emailed about it 3 times.
Komplett - for making me sort out my own return courier. Twice.
Microsoft - for screwing over my PC in the first place.
So my mobo and CPU arrived back from Komplett this morning, with a full report as to why there is nothing wrong with them. I rebuild my machine. It works. For 5 minutes. Powers off. Shit. Thereafter it doesn't stay powered on for more than 2-3 minutes at any time. I swap in the HDDs from the Debian box. It stays powered on. I whap the CPU a bit so the load stays over 1. It stays powered on. For 30 minutes so far.
I can't find my original Windows XP media or the licence key sticker.
I am officially fed up.